Talk Stories

by Jamaica Kincaid

  “Only twenty minutes?” she asked.

  “Only twenty minutes,” he said. “What are you going to drop?”

  “I guess I’ll drop ‘Slip Away’ and the encore,” she said.

  After he left, she said, “I only got twenty minutes. I don’t care. I’m not going to feel bad about it. Nothing is going to make me feel bad tonight.”

  Her band—five young men and a young woman, who was the backup singer—came in, and she told them what songs they would be doing. She said, “We’ll do ‘It’s Important to Me,’ not stopping but straight into ‘That’s What Friends Are For,’ and then I stop and talk a little, and then we do’ ’Cause You Love Me, Baby,’ ‘If You Don’t Believe,’ and ‘Free,’ and that’s it.” She asked all the people in the room except the members of the band to leave, so that she and the band could pray before they went onstage. The songs she sang onstage were not as familiar to us as “Free,” but then she sang that, too, and it was even better than listening to it on the car radio.

  —April 4, 1976

  Junior Miss

  Every year, fifty high-school seniors, representing our fifty states, compete in a televised national Junior Miss contest, sponsored by Eastman Kodak, Kraft Foods, and Breck Shampoo. The winner, America’s Junior Miss, receives a ten-thousand-dollar scholarship to the college of her choice. Two days before New York’s Junior Miss, Dawn Fotopulos, of Queens, was scheduled to go to Mobile, Alabama, to compete in the Junior Miss finals, she came over to Manhattan, accompanied by her mother, Mrs. William Fotopulos, and had her picture taken by the News, had a long lunch at the St. Regis, and was interviewed on three radio talk shows. When we first saw Miss Fotopulos, who is just under eighteen, she was standing near a rack of clothes in a shop on East Fifty-third Street, obliging the News photographer with the many poses he wanted her to assume. She was wearing a green wool blazer, green-and-white patterned knit slacks, and a white blouse. She has blue eyes, ruddy cheeks, and long light-brown hair that flips up around her shoulders. Except for a trace of mascara, lip gloss, and blue eye shadow, she wore no makeup, and except for a small pair of pearl earrings she wore no jewelry. After taking the shots in the store, the photographer told Miss Fotopulos that he wanted some shots of her walking down Fifth Avenue. On Fifth Avenue he stood her a few yards in front of him and told her to walk toward him now—first slowly, then fast, then slowly again. He sat her on one of the large planters that line the Avenue, tilted her head forward, and told her to stay in that position. He told her to gaze into a shopwindow displaying an assortment of women’s shoes. He told her to gaze into another shopwindow, which had an assortment of women’s sports clothes. Altogether, the photographer took thirty-six pictures of Miss Fotopulos, and for every single one of them she smiled.

  At lunch at the St. Regis, Miss Fotopulos had roast beef, lyonnaise potatoes, salad with French dressing, a glass of milk, and fruit cup. She said that she had never before been in a place like the St. Regis, or had lyonnaise potatoes. She said, “I feel it’s a dream. I feel I’m Cinderella or something. All this special treatment. Everybody has been treating me as if I were something special. It’s so much fun. When I entered this contest, I had no idea all this would happen. I found out about the contest in Seventeen, and I wrote away for the forms. I thought I wouldn’t win, because I didn’t have a local sponsor. I was a candidate at large. But this is not like a beauty contest. You don’t have to wear a bathing suit. It mostly has to do with scholarship and poise and grace. I have a ninety-five-point-six average. I want to study medicine; and the money that I have already won will help me to do that.”

  Mrs. Fotopulos showed us a picture of her daughter wearing a long white sleeveless gown and carrying a bouquet of roses as she walked down a runway at the New York State contest, held in Syracuse, in February. Mrs. Fotopulos said, “She’s made us so proud of her. You know, she has received a letter of congratulations from our state senator, and Governor George Wallace has sent her a letter welcoming her to the State of Alabama.”

  At the radio talk show we sat in on, the hostess told her the theme of the day: “Whether Our Idea of Mr. Right Has Changed or Not.” She asked Miss Fotopulos questions like “Do you cook?” (Miss Fotopulos said yes), “Do you believe in Mr. Right?” (Miss Fotopulos said she thought that that might be a possibility), “Do you know who Bess Myerson is?” (Miss Fotopulos identified her as Miss America of 1945), “Do you have a pair of white gloves?” (“Well, I have to, because of the pageant”), and “Have you ever been to a prom?” (Miss Fotopulos said she hadn’t).

  Then the hostess asked Miss Fotopulos, “How do you feel about kissing?”

  When Miss Fotopulos didn’t reply immediately, the hostess said, “You’re representing New York State and you don’t have a stand on kissing?”

  “Well, that’s kind of unfair,” Miss Fotopulos said. “I would never ask you how you feel about kissing.”

  —May 10, 1976

  A Civic Gathering

  THE TRAM: Last week, at an official midmorning ceremony, New York City opened to the public the Roosevelt Island Aerial Tramway, and thereby became the only urban community in the country with aerial-tramway transportation. The tramway, which serves the newly developed residential community on Roosevelt Island, runs thirty-one hundred and thirty-four feet alongside the Queensboro Bridge. There are two cars, and they are never in either station at the same time. The tramway has a maximum travelling speed of sixteen and three-tenths miles per hour, and each tramcar can carry a maximum of one hundred and twenty-five passengers, plus one operator. It takes three and one-half minutes to get from station to station.

  When we arrived at the ceremony, which was being held at the Manhattan end of the run, we were met by a band called Al Madison and the Dixie Dance Kings, who played “When the Saints Go Marchin’ In” over and over. On the boarding platform, there was some confusion. We saw a group of television reporters huddled together in a circle, all trying to talk at the same time. We later realized that they were interviewing Mayor Beame. We saw people boarding the tramway and then being asked by the conductor to debark. And we saw people drinking champagne. At ten forty-two the first tramcar, which carried dignitaries and members of the press, started across for Roosevelt Island. All the passengers, some with glasses in hand, cheered. It climbed up and up, reaching a peak of two hundred and fifty feet over the East River. Someone pointed out a fireboat gushing water and bellowing a greeting. The passengers cheered. Someone pointed out the United Nations. The passengers cheered. And when the other tramcar, coming from Roosevelt Island, passed by—empty—the passengers cheered for that, too. Then the eastbound car started to descend. It felt a little bit like a roller coaster, and the passengers, in unison, said “Whoooo!”

  At Roosevelt Island, Mayor Beame, looking quite distinguished in a navy-blue suit, made a speech. He said, “We just took a ride over in this tramway, and, believe me, it’s safe. This is the only aerial urban tramway in America, and it shows that New York is first, as always.” Then he broke a bottle of champagne on the tramcar, and everybody cheered. Immediately afterward, there was a party for dignitaries, press, and Roosevelt Island residents in a park on Roosevelt Island. When we got to the party, Al Madison and his Dixie Dance Kings were playing away—only this time the tune was “Has Anybody Seen My Girl?” People were waiting in line for hot dogs, fried chicken, or a drink. They ate and drank two thousand hot dogs, thirty-five hundred pieces of chicken, eight hundred cups of Pepsi, eighteen hundred cans of Schlitz, one hundred and twenty bottles of New York State Gold Seal wine, and a case of champagne—all donated to the city.

  —May 31, 1976

  In Central Park

  LINES: The Hospitality Industry Foundation of New York City, which was recently set up by a group of New York restaurateurs, sponsored a Saturday food festival in the Mall and Literary Walk area of Central Park, and never before have we seen so many New Yorkers in one place having so much fun. Seventy-two restaurants participated, each wi
th a booth and each selling one or two dishes, sometimes brought over from the restaurant and sometimes prepared on the spot. The visitors ate all the food sold by the participating restaurants, watched musicians and other performers perform, strolled around, and were polite to one another. The police estimated that more than three hundred thousand men, women, and children were present. There were so many people at the festival that a lot of them had to stand in lines, sometimes up to forty-five minutes, just to pay five dollars for a book of twenty tickets that enabled them to buy servings of food ordinarily sold as spécialités de la maison at the participating restaurants. Then there were long lines for the food. The line at the “21” Club booth (steak tartare) was about two blocks long. The line at Marvin Gardens (mussels marinière and tabouleh salad) was about three blocks long. The line at Beefsteak Charlie’s (slices of steak on a bun) was about four blocks long. There was a line at just about every food booth; and even to get a hot dog from a hot-dog vender who was not an official part of the food festival required waiting in line. No one seemed to mind.

  We walked around, and here are some of the things we saw: a man juggling with cowbells and tambourines, a woman spinning a pie pan on a stick while doing somersaults, a man dressed in black doing magic tricks, a man dressed in black telling jokes about balloons, a clown, a mime, three flamenco dancers, a man playing an accordion, and a puppeteer. We met three boys collecting yogurt-cup tops at the Dannon Milk Products booth. They said that they had already collected seven thousand tops and that they hoped to have enough to be included in the Guinness Book of World Records. We stopped in at the Lost Children Area but didn’t see any lost children. We saw six stout Spanish-speaking women with purple jumbo rollers in their hair relaxing under a tree. Near the end of the afternoon, we stopped by the bandshell, where various groups were performing. There was a rock group called Lance, and it was well received. There was a group called the West Side Singers, unaccompanied by any musical instrument. Its members looked like a Better Citizens Committee. They tuned up their voices by singing a few bars of “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again.” Then they sang all the way through “Spinning Wheel,” the old Blood, Sweat & Tears hit, with much vigor and in perfect harmony. By the end of it, they had lost a good many of the younger members of their audience.

  —June 7, 1976

  The Fourth

  Report from our friend Jamaica Kincaid:

  I love America and Americans, because my father, who was an Antiguan, and who had worked as a civilian carpenter on the American base in Antigua during the Second World War, used to tell me how funny and great Abbott and Costello were, how funny and great the “Road” pictures with Bing Crosby and Bob Hope were, and how funny and great and attractive and smart Americans in general were. He would tell me all sorts of stories about Americans, who were always named Bud or Dick, and always the Americans were funnier, greater, smarter, and more attractive than anybody else, including him. At the end of every story about Americans, whom he always referred to as the Yanks, he would say, “Oh, the Yanks are a crazy bunch, but they have ideas, and you can’t stop a man when he has ideas.” But the thing my father said about Americans that made me love them the most was “The Yanks are great. Listen, if a Yank ever asks you if you can do something and you can’t do it, don’t say ‘No,’ say ‘I’ll try.’” My father was a snobby, critical, dignified man, who usually said very little about anything. It was from him that I got the full meaning of the term “It doesn’t measure up.” And I knew that if he felt the way he did about Americans, you could forget everything else. When I was nine years old, I added an extra plea to my prayers. Up to then, I would say the Twenty-third Psalm and the Lord’s Prayer, and I would pray that God would bless my mother and father and make them live long enough to see me become a grown woman, and would bless me and help me to be a good girl. But when I was nine years old I started adding, “And please, God, let me go to America.” I did this for six years straight. As I grew older, I got my own ideas about why I wanted to go to America. It had to do with pink refrigerators; shoes that fall apart if you get caught in the rain (because that way you can get a new and different pair); the flip in Sandra Dee’s blond hair as she played a pregnant teen-ager in the movie A Summer Place; Doris Troy, the way she looked and the way she sang “Just One Look”; and, of course, Negroes, because any place that Negroes are is cool.

  On Sunday, I thought about all those things. I thought about them because it was the Fourth of July and America was two hundred years old and I found myself among millions of Americans celebrating it by looking at a bunch of ships sail up a river. It sounds silly, but that is one of the coolest things I have ever done. I walked around and I saw some French sailors mistakenly walk into an all-male bar on lower Tenth Avenue looking for girls. I saw a group of black boys climb all the way to the very top of a steel arch on the abandoned West Side Highway to get a better view of things. They looked so neat—like a Cartier-Bresson photograph. And I met four natives of Poland who told me that after spending a week in New York they were sailing down the Mississippi to make a documentary on Mark Twain for Polish television. I felt tremendous, and for the first time in the eleven years I have lived here I felt like an American. I am very grateful to my father, who told me in his special way that, no matter what, I should always go with the cool people.

  —July 19, 1976

  Boz Scaggs

  We went to the Wollman Memorial Rink, in Central Park, the other evening to hear Boz Scaggs, a singer who comes from Texas, perform. There are a few things we have always liked about Boz Scaggs. We like his performing name (Boz Scaggs) and we like his real name (William Royce Scaggs). We like the songs he sings, which are mostly his own compositions and are mostly about bad boys (as in a song called “Lowdown”) and bad girls (as in a song called “Georgia”). When we saw him in the Park, we found other things to like. For instance, his live singing voice isn’t at all far removed from his recorded singing voice; he talks with a nice Texas drawl; and he never once asked the audience if everybody was feeling all right or to accompany his singing with handclaps.

  Boz Scaggs is not a new performer or a widely popular old performer. During the late sixties, he was a member of the Steve Miller Band, a San Francisco rock group. Since then, as a solo performer, he has had a “following.” He’s been very popular in cities like San Francisco, where he now lives, and New York. But his popularity seems to be getting national. We took a look at Billboard, the music-trade magazine, and saw that his latest album was in the Top Forty of both the regular chart and the black-music chart.

  At the Wollman Memorial Rink, we saw many people wearing T-shirts that said simply “Boz.” Onstage, Boz Scaggs, a tallish, handsome man with brown hair that he wears swept back in a beatniklike style, wore blue pants, a red turtleneck sweater, and white sneakers. He was accompanied by some other musicians and by two pretty girl singers wearing white backless gowns. Sometimes he sang and played a white guitar, sometimes he sang and played a gold guitar, sometimes he sang and played a piano, and sometimes he sang and danced around. Almost always he said something about the song he was about to sing. He said, “This song is about a lady thing; it’s about when it’s all over,” and he sang a song called “It’s Over.” He said, “This is a song about a cat who’s inside doing time all because of a girl named Georgia. If you listen, you’ll know why,” and he sang “Georgia.” Then he sang a song called “What Can I Say.” It’s our favorite Boz Scaggs song, because of these two lines: “Stop makin’ like a little schoolgirl” and “Could be your lucky day, baby.” That song made us very happy.

  —August 30, 1976

  A Gathering

  PARTY: Among certain hip people in New York the word “party” has nothing to do with a dinner, or a birthday, or fishing, or hunting, or politics; rather, it has to do with going out to a discothèque, dancing for hours, and having a good time. They say to each other, “Let’s party.” Or—and this is the coolest way of saying it—“Let’s part
y down.” Songs have been written in which the word “party” alone, chanted against a funky beat, is the refrain. A man we know named Vince Aletti spends much of his time “partying,” and, as can be imagined, he has a lot of fun. Vince Aletti loves to dance, knows just about all the good current dance songs, and writes a column on discothèque music for a national music-trade magazine. When popular-music critics write uncomplimentary articles about discothèque music, Vince Aletti, in turn, will write articles defending and promoting discothèque music. He has written articles defending the Trammps, Archie Bell and the Drells, and others. Last winter, in his column, he mentioned what a great song for dancing “Love to Love You Baby,” by Donna Summer, was, and because he was the first person to write about that song and it became a big hit the record company gave Vince Aletti a gold record.

  Every Saturday night, Vince Aletti goes dancing at a place in lower Manhattan called The Loft. On a recent Saturday night, he invited us to come along. On our way, he told us some things he thought we ought to know about The Loft. He said, “The Loft is open only on Saturday nights. It isn’t like a regular discothèque; it’s more like a private party. You just go and you meet your friends and you have a good time.” (Vince Aletti is a very shy, retiring man in his late twenties, and it occurred to us that he would never go anyplace where his friends wouldn’t be. Once, we introduced him to a man from the Midwest, and the man grabbed his arm and said, “Hey tiger, how ya doing? God love ya.” It made him wince visibly.) Vince Aletti said that the people who go to The Loft to dance were called “guests”; that most of them started coming in at one o‘clock; that to get into The Loft you had to show an invitation; that to receive an invitation you had to have a friend who was already a member submit your name; and that The Loft sometimes stayed open until seven o’clock in the morning.